Is the Game Rigged? Say it ain’t so!

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against a former director of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble, accusing him of passing illegal tips about those companies to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager set to go on trial next week for insider trading. Rajat K. Gupta, former Goldman director, is the highest-profile… Read more »

Intellectual Property Disputes

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

The proper valuation and management of intellectual property is an area where accountants add value to their client services.  Often companies engage accountants and other financial experts to defend both plaintiffs and defendants in intellectual property (“IP”) disputes. As this video shows, similarity in names or trademarks can be at the heart of these disputes. … Read more »

Bank of America CEO: Sorry no Raise.

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

Bank of America Corp. is not giving its top executive a raise for 2011, unlike some rivals in the financial services industry. Over the past year, the nation’s largest bank by assets saw its stock fall 11 percent. While President and CEO Brian Moynihan didn’t receive a raise in his base salary or any cash-settled… Read more »

More BP back in the News

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are currently investigating several BP entities regarding trading in the next-day natural gas market at Houston Ship Channel during October and November 2008. The FERC’s enforcing body is now mulling whether to pursue charges against BP, which was prosecuted on… Read more »

The Avandia Disaster

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s $3.4 billion legal charge on the diabetes drug Avandia probably isn’t the last of the costs the company will record against this drug. That means Avandia will probably be a lossmaker for GSK, proving that former CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier 1999 failure to follow up on worries about heart attack deaths associated with Avandia… Read more »

Lawsuit Loans

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The business of lending to plaintiffs in court cases arose over the last decade as part of a trend in which banks, hedge funds and private investors are putting money into other people’s lawsuits. But the industry, which now lends plaintiffs more than $100 million a year, remains unregulated in most states, free to ignore… Read more »

The Accountant Did It

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

A 43-year-old CPA who volunteered to do the books for the Libertyville Boys Club turned himself in after $66,700 of the not-for profit group’s youth football program funds were missing. Jacobsen had been volunteering his services to the club since February 2009 as the treasurer of the club based at Butler Lake Park, Illinois. Libertyville… Read more »

2011 Prediction

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

According to William K Black, the FBI and the DOJ will not be likely to prosecute the elite bank officers that ran the enormous “accounting control fraudss that drove the financial crisis. While over 1,000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan crisis from the 1980’s and 1990’s , there are no convictions of… Read more »

Cooking the Books for Lehman?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

N.Y. Attorney General Cuomo filed charges against Ernst & Young on December 21, 2010, alleging that the firm helped Wall Street Investment bank Lehman Brothers conceal its deteriorating financial condition before the bank’s historic collapse in the fall of 2008.  The civil lawsuit, which seeks more than $150 million, is the first law enforcement action to… Read more »

Who Holds the Note? A Loaded Question for Credit Scores.

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

Before Steven Marks started looking for debt relief on his Reno, Nev. home, he sent a simple request to Bank of America to ask who owned his mortgage.  He also wanted documentation of this.  What he got in return was an initial decline regarding who owned his loan by Bank of America and a lowering of his credit score. … Read more »